Photometric stereo is a technique for reconstructing the surface geometry of an object by observing the object under varied lighting conditions. The intensity of the light reflected from the surface of the object can be defined as a function of the orientation of the surface with respect to the observer. Since an image of the surface is one dimensional, it is not possible to determine the geometry, or shape, of the surface using a single image and a single source of illumination. Some photometric stereo techniques can be used to calculate the range or distance between the observer and points on the surface of the object by relating two or more images of the object successively illuminated from different directions, and to reconstruct the geometry of the object by integrating vectors estimated from the calculated ranges. For instance, the direction of illumination incident upon the object can be varied between successive observations of the object from a fixed viewing direction. Since the geometry of the object is unchanging, the effect of varying the direction of incident light is to change the reflectance of a given point on the surface of the object. Such differences in reflectance at each point can provide sufficient information for determining the orientation of the surface at that point, given a constant imaging geometry. Prior solutions assume Lambertian reflectance, in which the apparent brightness of the surface is the same regardless of the viewing angle, and uniform albedo, in which the amount of radiation reflected from the surface as a ratio of the amount of radiation incident upon it is constant across the entire surface. To produce high quality geometries, prior photometric stereo techniques utilize a large number of images of the object, which can be tedious to collect. There remain other issues as well.